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Like The X Files, but with scripts spun out of the eponymous brothers’ fairy tales. Not for children.

The more you watch of Lost Girl’s first season, the more you might feel like you’ve seen it somewhere before.

The crux of the show’s mythology – that a community of mythical beings called Fae has existed unseen in our society for centuries – is so similar to the back story for Grimm that you could be forgiven for feeling slightly suspicious. Yet, this season of Lost Girl first aired on Canadian telly a year before NBC launched its fairy tale-inspired procedural.

The similarities between Lost Girl and Grimm would be greater still if the former didn’t feature so much sex and swearing. The heroine, Bo (Anna Silk), is a sexy succubus with a seductive touch and an unfortunate tendency to drain the life out of men she makes love to (unless they are also Fae, in which case the invigorating rumpy-pumpy works both ways).

To stop her from feeding on randy humans, Bo relies on her sassy sidekick Kenzi (Ksenia Solo), who has no special powers, but is great at filching wallets and looks good in a wig. These two are hurriedly brought together in the series’ opener, in which they start a sort of two-person Fae-Team that offers assorted services to anyone who can’t get help elsewhere. Among those who soon come calling are a flatulent will-o’-the-wisp and a batty, middle-aged woman who thinks her cat is possessed.

Such silliness might make it sound like Lost Girl wouldn’t appeal to a mature audience, but it is incidental to meatier season-long arcs about Bo’s mysterious past and her refusal to align with either the Light Fae or their dark side.

Lost Girl works as adult entertainment because it’s serious when it should be. It also has a well-thought out mythology populated by interesting supporting characters that includes detective Dyson (Kris Holden-Ried), who answers Bo’s 911 booty calls when she gets injured, and bartender Trick (Richard Howland), who hides a dark secret.

Factor in the episode where Bo is hired for a threesome, and you have a show that may not be the stuff of legend, but is never dull.